Life Imitates Art?

Paris Hilton Tweeted Out My Book Cover, Which Was Pretty Cool!

Here’s the weirder-than-weird story of how that happened.

Photo is Creative Commons licensed, by Victoria Pickering on Flickr. (One of the few nice Creative Commons photos out there of Paris Hilton, the rest being subject to copyrights for various media and photographers, of course.)

Like so many other writers, I’m flummoxed by the task of book marketing. We writers like to create art with our precious time rather than pursue the mundane tasks of marketing and advertising. Thinking of the idealistic writing life, I keep hearing Dave Grohl’s famous lyric in my head: “Done, done and I’m on to the next one” (from the Foo’s tune, All My Life) — meaning, I’d rather finish something, set it free, and move onto writing something new.

And yet, that’s just not how it works, is it? It’s more like a Glengarry Glen Ross situation where one must Always Be Closing, continually in sales mode with respect to our work. With my latest novel, Chroo (published Nov 4. 2019), I’ve barely made any headway in that department. I did try, at least (and continue to). My post of December 6 outlined all I’ve done around that, and next steps:

Social Media Connections Aren’t Especially Meaningful As a Book Marketing Strategy

Progress has been slow, but somewhat steady. I now have three 5-star reviews on…